Academic collections – spanning the arts, sciences, and medicine – are a prominent feature of many major universities. But the history of these collections, and the cultures that have cultivated them, has been strangely neglected. This interdisciplinary volume explores aspects of the history of academic collections as a university of things – represented by research, representation, application, and commodification. A group of international authors examines the nature of objects as a resource for the history of science and culture, in ways that have helped shape the research university of today.

Contents:

• M. Fehr: Museums and their Collections: A Dynamic Relationship
• F. Egmond: Collecting Naturalia: The Formation of an Academic Botanical Tradition in Leiden
• T. Laely: The Schinz Collection of the Ethnographic Museum of the University of Zurich 
• G. Pancaldi: Materialities of the Scientific Process – What can be Learnt from the History of Electricity in an Old University Town 
• J. P. Collett: Collecting coins – ‘Bildung’ and ‘Forschung’ in a 19th Century University 
• G. Krüger: Mummified Heads from New Zealand in the Ethnographic Collection of the University of Göttingen 
• R. Jütte: Juridical and Ethical Aspects of Displaying Anatomical Specimens in Public 
• A. Hermannstädter / C. Quaisser / J. Vogel: The Integrated Research Museum: Cuttingedge Collections-based Research Meets Innovative Public Engagement 
• A. Macgregor: What a University Museum Might Become: Inventing (and Re-inventing) the Ashmolean 
• A. Mitchell / G. Wiesenfeldt: Craftsmen, merchants and scholars: Hiring practices at the Universities of Leiden and Edinburgh, 1575–1750